Our youth art contest encourages students to use their imaginations to illustrate their concerns and solutions for climate change, which can range from its impact on animal life to their own creative inventions to solve this global challenge.

 

The contest was created by Eakin Films & Publishing, a producer of movie tie-in books and audiobooks. The cause-driven publisher works with prominent public figures in art, entertainment and sports who participate as judges. Recent judges included Academy Award-winning actor Louis Gossett, Jr., PGA Coach of the Year Kevin Kirk and Art Biographer & Singer Abigail Rockwell (granddaughter of Norman Rockwell). 

Cash prizes are awarded to winners and cool Climate Champions t-shirts are provided to all finalists. All participants receive a “Be a Hero – Climate Champions” certificate for their effort.

 

Each participant’s accepted artwork will be displayed on the social media pages of the climate youth organization we support, Canary Climate Collective. Sponsors for the contest include Home Energy Club and GetGreenEnergy.com, which offers renewable energy solutions from Gexa Energy and other 100% green energy providers.

Local newspapers in each state will be notified of students from their area who submitted artwork.

 

Any student in 1st through 12th grade is invited to participate.

Students must incorporate the theme What Climate Change Means to Me into their original artwork, and include a one-sentence explanation of the work.

Email us a digital image of your artwork. You can scan it to create a jpeg or pdf, or take a  picture of it with your smart phone.

Contest dates for 2023 to be announced in fall.

Finalists/Winners will be chosen from three grade divisions:

Lower Grades

Middle Grades

Upper Grades


Be Inspired

Below are 1st Place winners for Upper Grades, Middle Grades and Lower Grades from our program in Louisiana, where the contest was first launched in a successful pilot project with the State Library of Louisiana. Our judges were very impressed with the imaginations, creativity and skill of the young artists, and their expressions of the implications of climate change. We wish to convey our heartfelt thanks to the librarians and teachers who encouraged the students, and the State Library of Louisiana for its support. To view the artwork of the all the winners and finalists, go to the Facebook page, where you’ll also find comments from our celebrity judges.

 

To develop ideas for your artwork, you may wish to first perform some research on climate change on the internet or your local public library. It would be helpful to learn about carbon dioxide pollution (CO2), which causes climate change and results from the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel-based CO2 enters the atmosphere when our cars burn gasoline or when natural gas is used to generate electricity at power plants. Solar panels and wind mills generate clean renewable energy (“green” energy), reducing our need for fossil fuels and lowering emissions of CO2. And did you know that methane emitted from belching cows also contributes to a warming of the atmosphere?

Consider how climate change may impact the world in which we live, from its effects on creatures on the land and in the ocean, to the melting of glaciers, to the flooding of cities. Or perhaps you’ll wish to draw your own magical invention to remove CO2 or methane from the atmosphere. Your artwork can be hopeful, sad, funny, whatever you wish, as long as it relates to the theme. See links to the infographics below for more ideas:


 

Recent Climate Champions Art Contest Judges